Gibbs took offense to Matthews’ suggestion that the President’s stances are unclear, calling Matthews’ accusations “crazy and unfounded,” and Matthews took offense right back.

Matthews began by asking Gibbs “Is President Obama a liberal?”

Gibbs resisted the premise, steering his response around to the President’s relentless appeal to independent voters. “I don’t know that the President has really strong feelings on political labels on any side,” he said, before shifting the focus to Republicans’ opposition of measures they once supported, adding “Independents don’t want games.”

Things got a little testy when Matthews said “I don’t think the American people know what President Obama would do if no one were standing in his way. What would he do if he had the power to set policy” on things like the deficit and Medicare reform, adding, “We don’t know because he hasn’t told us what he wants to do.”

Gibbs took exception, cutting off panelist David Corn to say, “Chris is making some crazy, unfounded accusations that somebody needs to answer.”

Matthews responded incredulously, “Crazy and unfounded accusations? Tell me what the President wants to do with Medicare.”

Unfortunately, Matthews interrupted Gibbs before he could answer, but Corn stepped in to point out, correctly, that everyone knows Barack Obama is a “progressive-minded” person. Matthews’ premise is all wrong.

The real question is, what did Barack Obama do when there was no one standing in his way? With unbreakable majorities in Congress, he still allowed his agenda to be weakened by Republican ideas, passing a too-small, tax-cut-heavy stimulus, a health care reform bill without a public option (how great would Medicare For All sell against Paul Ryan’s voucher plan?), and toothless financial regulatory reform. Part of the problem is that many in his own party cosigned those bad ideas, but it’s fair to ask if a president should have more control than that over his own party.

People know where President Obama stands, they just don’t know why he keeps walking toward people who will never meet him halfway, or if he will ever stop.

As the segment ended, Matthews expressed hurt, saying, “I think, Robert, you do me a disservice when you say my ideas are crazy when I want clarity from this president.”

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s Hardball:

Pointing out a Tea Party-funded ad against Perry that mocked his “cowboy” image and used gratuitous saloon music, Smerconish argued that “if I’m Mitt Romney, this is what I was hoping for.” Mother Jones editor David Corn agreed, adding that it would help Romney if “they all start shooting at each other with that saloon music,” since it would guarantee him “the non-crazy vote.” That said, the debate next week would be absolutely critical, he concluded, as many candidates received much praise before failing in the debate: “Think of what people said about Fred Thompson.”

Fellow panelist Michelle Bernard was excited for the debate, but was particularly fascinated with the potential gender dynamics with Rep. Michele Bachmann in the race. She predicted Perry “will do very well if that’s your cup of tea” (pun intended), and that Palin would be a game-changer only in the extent of the primaries, as “she could never win a general election.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

Maddow noted that her favorite statement in all the emails was the latter, and she couldn’t imagine she had missed anything more amusing despite not reading the entirety of the files. That invitation was forwarded but never replied to, “which means absolutely nothing,” Maddow concluded. She did detail the history of why these emails were released this week. Mother Jones’ David Corn requested the files in 2008, when no one quite knew who Palin was. It took more time for the files to be released– in print– than the entirety of Palin’s tenure as governor. The records are so extensive, however, that the organizations that now have copies are “crowdsourcing” the work of reading them: “everybody read, and everybody share what you find,” Maddow explained. The files can be found here.

Maddow had Corn on the program last night to explain the process and thinking behind requesting the files. Corn explained that “she was such an unknown” that it seemed like a good idea to find out more, and that “one of the first stories I came across [about Palin] was an email request for emails of her aides.” The biggest problem seemed to be that Palin had three accounts, only one of which was public.

Corn also noted that many of the emails were redacted, including one whose subject was “same sex,” and that Palin had expressed in several emails admiration for John Hagee, the other controversial pastor from 2008 who endorsed Sen. John McCain

The segment via MSNBC below:

According to a source within the WHCA, the demand for tickets to this year’s dinner was at an all-time high, with 360 requests for tables submitted, out of only 262 available tables. The demand was so high that some dues-paying members of the Association weren’t even able to get a single seat, although the source says these were all organizations that only signed up recently. “We can’t have people joining just so they can go to the dinner.”

The WHCA accepts applications, and checks, for whatever the number of seats requested, then divvies them up according to several factors. WHCA board members get first dibs, followed by those organizations which participate most heavily in pool coverage, and those that travel most frequently with the President. This can lead to some unhappy campers, as World Net Daily‘s 2010 lawsuit illustrates. WND requested three tables to fete correspondent Les Kinsolving, but was only granted two tickets. Kinsolving, the second most senior correspondent, will not be attending this year.

Of those members who do get to attend, many have had to scale back their own guest list to accommodate larger outlets, who can lock up as many as seventeen seats, many for non-press interlopers like Justin Bieber, Alec Baldwin, and Bristol Palin. While not the most egalitarian approach, such star wattage helps to make the dinner a buzzworthy affair.

For the workhorses who actually cover the White House, the dinner is something of a mixed bag. CBS radio’s Mark Knoller, a Twitter superstar and leading contender for Press Corps “Dean,” relishes the “chance to see old friends and colleagues,” but in addition to the perpetual nightmare of parking in DC, doesn’t care for “the Golden Globes aspect of the dinner. Unless I get Anne Hathaway to be my guest.”

Mother Jones‘ David Corn isn’t a big fan of the overcrowding, or the strained availability of tickets. Asked why he thinks the dinner is such a hot ticket for celebs, Corn theorizes, “Their lives are empty and meaningless? Or could it be the food?”

Perhaps the toughest cookie in the press corps, AURN’s April Ryan, looks forward to the dinner as a welcome reward for hard work. “It is really like a break after a continual study for what seems like a masters degree that never comes. We have to know every topic daily in a matter of minutes, and then pepper the President and/or administration officials for answers that matter to the public.”

For Ryan, the worst thing about the dinner is the “curse” of a glamorous night. “About 5 thousand people are packed into very small rooms for pre receptions trying to make it down the hall without getting your gown stepped on, or stepping on another fabulous creation.”

She doesn’t see a problem with the megawatt guest list, either. “Since I have been covering the White House for the past 14 years, it has alway been a major deal for politics and Hollywood to meet,” she says. “They follow us and we follow them. It seems like the natural order of things to me.”

Ryan doesn’t agree with critics of the dinner’s glitzier aspects, and notes the positive effects of such luminaries on the coverage of the dinner. “People come me out in large groups and wait in the Hotel lobby to see their favorite celebrity, and all the entertainment cameras are there, and the event is being aired on C-SPAN.  And, has anyone stopped to think some of the celebrities may actually have a connection with some Correspondents?”

Progressive radio host Bill Press, part of the “Professional Left” clique (along with Corn) in the briefing room, sees the dinner as a unique opportunity. “Last year, I met Joy Behar. I’m a huge fan. Since then, I’ve been on her show several times, and she’s been on mine. Great networking!”

Not every celeb sighting is a joy, though. Press’least favorite part of the event is “running into total jerks who don’t belong there and should never have been invited, like Donald Trump. I also don’t like seeing people I otherwise admire make whores out of themselves by inviting jerks like Donald Trump.”

Inevitably, events like these lead to criticisms that the press corps is “too cozy” with the administration it covers. Knoller allows that “In some cases, the criticism is right on target,” but others, like Corn, scoff at the idea.

“It’s very difficult to be cozy in a room full of 3000 people,” Corn begins. “In other words, I don’t think the media swallowed the Bush administration’s bogus case for war in Iraq because once a year reporters shared an evening in a cavernous ballroom with a handful of government officials who misrepresented intelligence to push a phony argument for the invasion.”

Huffington Post’s Jon Ward, late of The Daily Caller and The Daily, thinks the criticism is just overblown. “I like parties,” he says. “Parties are good. People who get all tense about parties maybe need to go to more of them.”

Press sees the criticism as sour grapes. “Those who criticize dinner as administration getting too cozy with media are those who couldn’t score a ticket,” Press says, adding, “Frankly, I’d rather see more people from administration and fewer from soap operas.”

If anything, the dinner is a demonstration of how much each White House needs the press corps, not the other way around.

The ever-increasing celebrity glare is both a blessing and a curse, raising the dinner’s profile, and with it, that of the work done by the press corps, but also diluting the journo-centric vibe of the event. Hopefully, a beneficial balance will be struck, but at the very least, we hope that folks remember this event the next time someone tries to suggest that we ain’t got no reason to live. No ticket for you!

Noel Sheppard’s apology is not the weaselly “sorry if you got offended” kiss-off that’s so popular nowadays, but an honest-to-goodness admission that he got it wrong:

This post has been modified from its original version.

After discussing with my colleagues the subject of this article, which claimed Mother Jones’s David Corn and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews engaged in an anti-Semitic discussion on Monday’s “Hardball,” I have decided that I do not stand by my allegation.

I apologize to Corn and Matthews for my misinterpretation of this conversation.

In the realm of online political media, and especially media criticism, it is rare to see anything but a grudging correction, and more often, the reaction to being called out is a face-saving double down. However, it has been my experience that Newsbusters, their opinion and analysis notwithstanding, make an effort to be honest and transparent, so this doesn’t surprise me.

Hopefully, the many conservative sites that picked this story up will also promote Sheppard’s retraction and apology.

In case you missed it, here is the original clip, followed by Newsbusters’ transcript of the portion in question (at about the 2 min mark):

Here’s Newsbusters’ transcript of the exchange:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: This coalition between the Right and Israel, the evangelical right in the United States, is not founded on personal friendships or anything like that, or even values. It’s founded on some sort of weird, rightwing thing where you just high five each other there at the Western Wall and then that’s done, they’re trip.

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: But there is a theological component which Gene was referring to…

MATTHEWS: Explain.

CORN: …Which is there’s a certain brand of evangelical Christians who believe in Revelations, that Armageddon is coming, and that will happen in Israel basically.

MATTHEWS: If they hold the West Bank.

CORN: If they hold, well there’s a lot of different components to that, but that’s why they like Israel. That’s why they want Israel to be strong. It’s not because…

MATTHEWS: It’s not personal.

CORN: Right. It’s not because they like Jews or Israelis.

MATTHEWS: [Laughs hysterically]

There ought to be a special word for falsely accusing a Jewish person of anti-Semitism. Maybe “anti-Semitism³?”

Update: David Corn responds to Newsbusters’ charge.

The offending quote occurs at about the 2-minute mark in this clip: (from MSNBC)

Here’s Newsbusters’ transcript of the exchange:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: This coalition between the Right and Israel, the evangelical right in the United States, is not founded on personal friendships or anything like that, or even values. It’s founded on some sort of weird, rightwing thing where you just high five each other there at the Western Wall and then that’s done, they’re trip.

DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: But there is a theological component which Gene was referring to…

MATTHEWS: Explain.

CORN: …Which is there’s a certain brand of evangelical Christians who believe in Revelations, that Armageddon is coming, and that will happen in Israel basically.

MATTHEWS: If they hold the West Bank.

CORN: If they hold, well there’s a lot of different components to that, but that’s why they like Israel. That’s why they want Israel to be strong. It’s not because…

MATTHEWS: It’s not personal.

CORN: Right. It’s not because they like Jews or Israelis.

MATTHEWS: [Laughs hysterically]

Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard never gets around to explaining why Corn’s remark is anti-Semitic, but does thoughtfully ask, “Which was more anti-Semitic: Corn’s comment or Matthews’ laughter afterwards?”

Is there a third choice, like “Newsbusters’ insistence that David Corn is an anti-Semite?”

Earlier in the clip, Matthews, Corn, and Eugene Robinson discuss the strain of Evangelical Christianity that believes in an end times prophecy which depends on Israel for its fruition, and whose only survivors will be those who convert to Christianity. They’re not making it up; I grew up in such a church.

On that count, Sheppard almost has a point when he says that Corn’s remark is “insulting to evangelical Christians.” It’s true that Corn’s view, popular among liberals, is uncharitable. In my church, we were taught to love non-believers, and to try and “save” them by witnessing to them if they were receptive, and to witness by example.

However, those non-believers can be forgiven for not appreciating a love that’s predicated on a belief that they will burn forever in a lake of fire if they don’t repent their non-believing ways. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Update: I emailed David the link to Newsbusters’ piece, and asked if he had any reaction to this unbelievable accusation. Here’s his response:

You ask if I can believe it? I cannot comprehend this charge. Literally. I don’t follow the extrapolation. How does questioning the motives of right-wing evangelical fundamentalists regarding their support of Israel translate into bias against Jews? If you get an explanation from Newsbusters, please forward.

Update: Newsbusters has apparently deleted the post, without explanation. Visitors to the link get the message “Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.” You can still see some or all of it at the various sites that amplified it.

Update: Noel Sheppard apologizes.

Corn went so far as to say Huckabee was “becoming the Charlie Sheen of the Republican Party.”

At this point, in homage to the beloved Godwin’s Law, let me propose Bershad’s Law, which (I hope) will only be applicable for the next few weeks or so. Bershad’s Law states that “as a person describes someone they disagree with, they will inevitably compare that person to Charlie Sheen to show how ‘crazy’ he or she is.” For examples, let me point you here, here, and, ahem, here.

Check out the clip from MSNBC below:

Matthews was somewhat mystified though, because he thought Huckabee was a “good guy basically, even if he’s a man of the sorta evangelical right.” Whether that statement suggests a determination that being a member of the evangelical right normally doesn’t make you a “good guy” is something that can be open for interpretation.

After Walsh and Corn piled on Huckabee with further criticism, Matthews boiled over and yelled “damn this point of view.” Matthews then embarked on a passionate defense of Obama and railed against Republicans who keep bringing up the “lie that won’t die” by hinting that Obama might be harboring anti-American values because of his background. Matthews suggested Obama has always “kept his nose clean” and blamed the continuous false claims about his upbringing simply on the fact that Obama “looks different.” Matthews concluded that “it’s scary and I hope the rest of the world isn’t paying attention to Mike Huckabee.”

Watch the clip from MSNBC below:

The analogy that Tapper’s sources paint has disturbing echoes of the tragic end of the 1993 siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. From Political Punch:

Officials analyzing Moammar Gadhafi’s rambling speech are concerned that the Libyan strongman is so untethered to reality he may “burn down the house with him,” as one put it, putting the Lybyan people — and hundreds of Americans — at risk, and prompting President Obama to carefully calibrate his words.

In his first public remarks on the crisis Wednesday, President Obama didn’t mention Gadhafi’s name, not wanting to personalize the crisis and feed into Gadhafi’s megalomaniacal worldview of this crisis as a showdown between him and President Obama.

Tapper goes on to elaborate on what his sources told him, and it’s worth a thorough read.

This kind of Monday morning quarterbacking is nothing new, and it is a free country, but in situations like this, administration critics really ought to weigh considerations as obvious as these. Surprisingly, while a Hardball panel that included David Corn failed to do so, Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Hot Air actually did, although they threw in some craven political calculation, as well: (emphasis mine)

The White House has a worst-of-all-possible-worlds scenario unfolding in Libya as it concerns Americans trapped in the country.  Until the US can safely get Americans to Malta or anywhere else — even Egypt and Tunisia don’t look bad at the moment — Obama can’t afford to provoke either side into attacking Americans, at least not if Obama thinks he will get blamed for any violence done to them.  The last thing Obama needs is yet another evocation of the Carter presidency with a long, drawn-out hostage crisis in a radical Islamist state.

So it’s understandable that Obama has tempered his reaction in this case with that context in mind. But even so, here’s a better question — why didn’t the White House start evacuating Americans from Libya when Egypt erupted into political chaos?  Did no one think that the uprisings just might spark a rebellion against one of the more brutal dictators in the region?

Of course, I have an even better question: Just how many Middle Eastern countries does Ed Morrissey think the President should have cut and run from as soon as things went south in Egypt? The difference between this course of action and the President’s statement is the difference between looking weak, and actually being weak.

Olbermann took exception, noting the irony of AIM’s use of sexual slang to decry the once-popular term for the Tea Party, but AIM’s bigger problem is in accusing Olbermann of “twisting the poll numbers” to tie the Tea Party to violence, while twisting those same numbers, and my commentary, to illustrate their point.

On the “teabagger” score, AIM’s tweet implies that Olbermann is still using the derogatory (if self-inflicted) term “teabagger.” Whether it’s a consequence of his new effort to tone things down, or just the fact that pretty much everyone but Bill Maher seems to have outgrown the sophomoric joke, give credit where it’s due. Olbermann didn’t use the term in the clip AIM references, and hasn’t for quite some time.

As for the poll they’re referencing, both AIM and sister watchdog Newsbusters have correctly noted that a new Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling survey that showed that 13% of Tea Party voters think that violence against the current American government is justified, versus 6% of Republicans, and 5% of Democrats, also showed that 17% of young voters (18-29 yrs old) gave the same response, a fact that I pointed out Tuesday.

Where they go wrong is in trying to make the case that the larger number for the young voters somehow renders the Tea Party result insignificant. Aim seems to think the fact that young people are the Tea Party’s smallest demographic cuts against the influence of rhetoric on attitudes toward violence. The exact opposite is true.

According to this poll, Tea Partiers are more than twice as likely to feel that violence against our is justified than Republicans or Democrats. At the same time, the core age demographic for the Tea Party, 30-64 years old, only responded positively at a rate of 3%. That means that a Tea Partier is more than four times as likely to feel violence is justified than the average voter in their core age group.

The 17% figure was also significant, and Olbermann probably should have mentioned it. I asked him, via Twitter, if this was an editorial decision, or an honest oversight, but he has not responded.

As I’ve said before, the Tea Party result is definitely worth noting. Tea Party Americans, as Sarah Palin calls them, are more than twice as likely to feel that violence against our government is justified, which is a persuasive indictment of the rhetoric of armed revolution that is the movement’s hallmark, and to which some Republicans play.

That is not to say that the shooting in Tucson was, directly or indirectly, caused by this. However, just because something you said didn’t cause a mass murder doesn’t mean it was a responsible thing to say.

Either way, though, Countdown is a show about politics, and there’s nothing wrong with discussing significant poll results that are related to politics. A discussion of the age demographic would have made it a more complete segment, but its absence doesn’t render it wrong. Furthermore, if you’re going to accuse someone of cherry-picking, you should try to avoid picking your own cherries in the process.

While it was refreshing to see Olbermann praise John McCain for a change, he did so while calling the balance of McCain’s Washington Post op-ed a “steaming serving of Washington Post Op-Ed partisan flab.”

Kum Ba Yah? No, nore like Kum Ba Naaah.

The President, for his part, spoke in Tucson about the collective need for a more civil national tone, and in doing so, claimed his portion of the responsibility for the lack of it. At that moment, and in the time since, the President seems to realize that this isn’t all about him.

Here’s the Special Comment, via MSNBC, followed by the transcript:

Transcript: (via MSNBC)

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the nine days since Tucson. That awful night, I said this: We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently. Left, right, middle — politicians and citizens — sane and insane.
This age in which this country would accept “targeting” of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces, and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

I cited seven examples of violent rhetoric from the right; and only one from the left — my own. Because the point of that Comment and this one was not that the right pulled the trigger in Tucson but that we as citizens must stop the next Loughner, and the only way to potentially do this is to accept personal responsibility and to pledge — as I said that night — that “violence, or the threat of violence, have no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence.”

This afternoon, former President Clinton issued a statement honoring what would have been Dr. King’s 82nd birthday:

“…we’d all do well to heed this message. While no one intends their words or actions to incite the violence we saw in Tucson — and it’s wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise – we live in a world where what we say and how we say it can be read, heard, or seen by those who understand exactly what we mean and by those whose inner demons take them to a very different place.

“That’s not an argument against free speech, but a reminder that, as with all freedoms, its use carries with it responsibility. Therefore, we should follow the example Dr. King set and exercise our freedom of speech in ways that both clarify our honest differences and nurture the best of us rather than bring out the worst.”

Perfect.

Yet the response?

To date, only one commentator or politician has expressed the slightest introspection, the slightest self-awareness, the slightest remorse, the slightest ownership, of the existence of the fantasy dream cloud of violent language by which we are now nearly blinded.

“Our political discourse,” John McCain wrote in an otherwise steaming serving of Washington Post Op-Ed partisan flab, “should be more civil than it currently is, and we all, myself included, bear some responsibility for it not being so.”

That’s it.

One individual assumed any personal responsibility for any of it, besides me: John McCain. Not Palin, not Beck. Not Limbaugh, not West. Not Kanjorski, not Malloy. Not O’Reilly, not Angle. Not Jesse Kelly, not President Obama.

It’s me and John McCain.

I assume he’s like me, not sure whether to laugh, cry, or be proud of that. So what did everybody else say?

They said it was everybody else’s fault. And they often said it with more violence than before.

In approximate chronological order:

Last Monday, while most on both sides were looking askance at the wealth of bogus documents that now traditionally follow these things, a writer at the discredited Breitbart site posted the headline, “Whoops! This Changes Things — Loughner’s Hero Was Barack Obama.”

Jim Hoft breathlessly cited a reference on the ‘Free Republic’ site to a Facebook page supposedly belonging to Jared Lee Loughner, complete with references to the quote “racist Tea Party” and “fight the Right,” and identifying his ” heroes” as Obama, Chavez, Che Guevara, and Saul Alinsky.

Mr. Hoft never noticed that on the alleged Loughner facebook page, the word “tyrrany” is misspelled and so is the name Loughner.

Last Monday a conservative radio host in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, complained about the coverage of the Giffords shooting by The New York Times, Bob Durgin said “Somebody ought to burn that paper down. Just go to New York and blow that sucker right out of the water.”

Mr. Durgin’s supervisor, one R.J. Harris, then improbably claimed “we do not advocate violence, period. That’s why this whole outcry over the shootings in Tucson being linked to talk radio is just crazy.”

Last Monday, another radio announcer named Rush Limbaugh dismissed Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a “liberal,” even though last August Fox News was proud to host Dupnik as he rescinded his opposition to the Arizona Papers-Please Law once its racial-profiling was toned down; and the year before Dupnik criticized as “catering to illegals.”

Limbaugh in fact blamed Dupnik for the shootings and added, “My guess is the sheriff wouldn’t mind if the shooter was acquitted.” Mr. Limbaugh also said, “I would wager that the sheriff knew of this shooter long before this event,” which was brave of Mr. Limbaugh, considering the sheriff had said as much two days previously.

Last Monday, Glenn Beck posted what he claimed was a call for non-violence on his Website alongside a shot of him posing with a gun. His pledge was a labyrinthine demand that everyone renounce violence, provided that liberals renounced a 78-year old woman named… named… well, what’s the difference? She’s just the latest target of a man enjoying a sequence of paranoid delusions — he’ll be obsessed with somebody else within the week.

On Tuesday, Republican Congressman Peter King of New York offered a limited, but useful prohibition against carrying weapons within a thousand feet of federally elected officials. But the leader of his party in the House, Speaker Boehner, immediately rejected it, out of hand, without public comment, or any hearing.

On Tuesday, another radio announcer, Mark Levin, wrapped up the case for his audience: “We all know without question that the murderer in Tucson was mentally ill, a liberal pothead and all the rest of it. We know this for a fact.”

On Tuesday, after Mr. Levin and yet another radio announcer, Michael Savage, were decried for using violent rhetoric, Mr. Savage called this a “blood libel” and threatened to sue, seemingly as much for having been linked to Mr. Levin, as for having been linked to violent rhetoric.

On Tuesday, Congressman West of Florida said he had “no regrets” for any of the violent rhetoric he had used in his campaign. Mr. West did not address why **after** the Tucson shootings this video of his first choice to be his Chief of Staff, Joyce Kaufman, had been pulled from You Tube (since, restored):

“I am convinced that the most important things the Founding Fathers did to insure my first amendment rights was to give me a second amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

Mr. West did say he was concerned about “the political opportunism that has come out of this.” He observed that pointing fingers about violent rhetoric was “kind of deplorable and unconscionable this is not the time to start looking for, you know, grandstanding and things of that nature.”

On Wednesday, a high school friend of Jared Laughner’s said, “he did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio.”

Blogger Hoft of the Breitbart site thereupon called for Sheriff Dupnik’s resignation, ignoring the rather obvious fact that there is a way one can avoid radio or television and still be extremely political. It’s called “the Internet” and is popular with bloggers, like Mr. Hoft.

Later, a high school girlfriend would say Loughner was “strongly opinionated” and would be set off by “things about the government, things about politics… anything that pretty much had to do with the government.” On Wednesday, conservative blogger John Hawkins announced this was all a liberal plot: “Keith Olbermann, Kos, David Brock. All of them are thrilled Gabrielle Giffords was shot. They couldn’t be happier about it. How bout that?”

On Wednesday, former Governor Palin of Alaska seemingly destroyed whatever her career was with an opportunistic video in which she identified the real victim here: herself.

She too invoked a “blood libel,” possibly as a dog-whistle to the ultra-religious right. And she almost literally said that while her words could not have caused violence, words critical of her words, they could cause violence.

On Wednesday, Arizona Congressman Trent Franks determined that the tragedy was that there just weren’t more bullets flying in that Tucson parking lot. “I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that’s all I have to say.”

Representative Franks was apparently unaware that there was “one more gun there that day.” A man named Joe Zamudio was carrying, and walked into the carnage. He saw another man with a gun in his hands, and was, by his own calculation, one second away from drawing his own and firing. That’s when he realized the man had taken the gun away from the shooter. Mr. Zamudio had nearly shot one of the heroes. As Mr. Zamudio put it “I was really lucky.”

On Thursday after President Obama’s remarks at the Tucson Memorial, Breitbart’s Mr. Hoft, shaking off his embarrassment over quoting the fake Loughner Facebook page, returned for more. “Oops!…It Looks Like Obama Fibbed About Giffords “Opening Her Eyes For the First Time.”

Then Giffords’ physicians confirmed, yes, the Gillibrand/Pelosi/Wasserman-Schultz visit was the first time the Congresswoman had opened her eyes spontaneously or at length. She had previously only done so, and only done so briefly, when prodded by doctors.

Doubling down, Hoft then claimed there was an applause sign flashed during the president’s remarks. In fact it was the closed-captioning on the arena video screen, informing the hearing-challenged that there had been applause.

On Friday, Bill Kelly of The Washington Times, took to heart the message in Mr. Obama’s comments to heart. “With the monolith of hooting fans, it wouldn’t surprise me that Obama supporters were actually bussed in for the memorial. Were they union employees or members of ACORN used to pepper the crowd to ensure conformity?”

Mr. Kelly then used the “blood libel” line himself and added “I’m not going to have my words, idioms, or expressions censored by the left because they see, in this crisis, a political opportunity to advance their agenda.”

On Friday, the former counsel to President Clinton, Lanny Davis, now reduced to being a paid contributor to Fox News, explained what he took away from this president’s remarks: that Mr. Obama should now publicly ask me to stop attacking Bill O’Reilly.

On Friday, Tucson Tea Party co-founder Trent Humphries explained the Giffords shooting to the English newspaper “The Guardian.” “It’s political gamesmanship. The real case is that she had no security at this event.”

James Eric Fuller, one of those wounded at this event, himself a traumatized Vietnam vet, referred to the “Tea Party crime syndicate” and said he believed that in the Giffords shooting, it had claimed its “first target.”

On Saturday, in a decision smacking of the tawdriness of the Maury Povich Show, Mr. Fuller was seated in the first row of an ABC News Town Hall in Tucson — with Mr. Humphries of the Tea Party on the stage. When Humphries suggested talk of gun control be deferred until after all the victims were buried, Mr. Fuller stood up and started to shout at Humphries, “You’re dead.” Mr. Fuller was, quite appropriately, arrested, and removed for psychological evaluation. He has today apologized, and Mr. Humphries has said he does not feel threatened necessarily and wants Fuller to get psychological help.

On Saturday, Michael Carroll, State Assemblyman of the 25th District of New Jersey, wrote an op-ed rebutting President Obama: “An armed populace is the greatest bulwark of freedom. Our framers understood that, and envisioned a society akin to Switzerland, in which every citizen is armed and responsible for his own defense, and that of the state.”

Assemblyman Carroll not only responded to President Obama’s remarks by painting an America with a gun under every bed. He also — of course — compared Obama to the Nazis: “Germany elected Hitler, who seized all private firearms to consolidate his murderous tyranny.”

And lastly, on Saturday, five days after the blogger Hoft scrubbed the post about the fake Facebook Loughner page with “Loughner” misspelled as “Laughner,” Doug Giles of TownHall.com cited it as gospel, as if it hadn’t been utterly discredited: “Loughner’s ‘hero list’ (according to Facebook) includes Barack Obama.”
Two days later, Giles’ claim still sits, uncorrected, on that Website.

Nine days have passed, and the willful blindness hasn’t even slowed down yet. Besides the total absence of even the glimmer of personal responsibility that Senator McCain and I have evinced, we learn from all this that the right lives in a perpetual state of victimhood.

We learn that the right doesn’t even recognize the irony of its claim of being unfairly blamed for the violence of others, when it has spent the last several years doing exactly that to Muslims — particularly American Muslims. We also learn that the right can simultaneously insist no political party or inclination can be blamed for Tucson — while it itself blames the Democratic party and the left, for Tucson.

We learn that the Right does not understand that if you — if we— foment a political environment in which politics are to be settled by violence, or the threat of violence, or in a rhetorical tide of violent imagery, it no longer matters what those politics specifically are, or if the hearer even understands your politics or agrees with your politics — he may hear only the permission to be violent.

And ultimately we learn — especially from Mrs. Palin’s foolishness — this template of what the right would do in an actual open-and-shut slam dunk case in which a partisan of the right attempted to kill one of the left. The right would blame that victim blame him or her for not having brought enough security. Or for not having brought a gun.

Buried in the report, though, is the fact that another group polled at 17% on the very same question, a group in which alleged Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner is firmly ensconced.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

The Tea Party result is definitely worth noting. Tea Party Americans, as Sarah Palin calls them, are more than twice as likely to feel that violence against our government is justified, which is a persuasive indictment of the rhetoric of armed revolution that is the movement’s hallmark, and to which some Republicans play.

That is not to say that the shooting in Tucson was, directly or indirectly, caused by this. As I’ve said before, though, just because something you said didn’t cause a mass murder doesn’t mean it was a responsible thing to say.

However, Olbermann misses another startling result from this poll. A whopping 17% of voters age 18-29 said they thought that violence against the current American government is justified, the very demographic from which alleged Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner sprang. Interestingly, results across the next two demographic groups were consistent at 3%, with a jump to 8% for voters over 65.

There’s probably not a lot of crossover between the Tea Party result and the 18-29 result, either. A Gallup survey from last year showed 18-29 as the Tea Party’s smallest demographic. It would appear that there are a bunch of pissed-off Tea Partiers, and an even bigger, different group of pissed-off young people.

There probably were some areas of crossover in other parts of the survey. Independents polled at 10% on the question, but a lot of them are probably Tea Partiers who disdain the GOP establishment. Finally, 13% of people making under $30,000 a year also thought that violence against our government is justified, a good portion of whom, it logically follows, are in that younger demographic.

What does it all mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that our youth are all Loughner-esque ticking time-bombs, nor are the Tea Partiers. What it does mean is that this tragedy has caused us to ask questions that we weren’t asking before, and we shouldn’t ignore the answers. One in six young people think that violence against our own government is justified, and almost one in seven Tea Partiers agree. Either our government has to stop deserving violence, or someone needs to calm these people down.

So much for abandoning the “usual plane of politics.” While Frum and Corn both agreed that the “blood libel” quote, which O’Donnell harped on repeatedly, was not the most offensive part of the speech for them, and Corn’s problem with it was that, especially in light of President Obama’s speech, was that it was “petty, narcissistic, and ignorant,” Frum merely viewed it as a failed attempt to prove her presidential mettle. “When you apply for a job, you should dress for the job you want,” Frum noted, “She dressed for the job she has.”

But it isn’t merely that Frum thinks Palin did not come off as presidential– she came off even less presidential than she has in the past. “She’s mad– that showed. She’s madder than she is sad. She’s very wounded by what has been done to her,” he explained, a sentiment he found inappropriate in comparison to the gravity of the event she was discussing.

As for her presidential ambitions, Frum concluded with an apt metaphor for an Alaskan politician: “She’s like a big melting iceberg in warm water, and I think a big chunk of ice just slipped off the side.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

There were also a few exchanges that underscored Jon Stewart’s influence, and a priceless quip by Mother Jones’ David Corn.

When a reporter asked Gibbs if the President is concerned that “a leading comedian is holding a political rally,” David Corn joked (off-mic), “One already did, in August.”

Gibbs told me that the President wouldn’t be attending the rally, but would instead begin the midterm campaigning home stretch this weekend. Thus seems like a bit of a missed opportunity, as Gibbs also told CBS’ Mark Knoller that The Daily Show is an effective way to reach young voters just before the midterms. A quick cameo at the rally would seem like time well spent.

Here is a compilation of the Stewart-related questions from the briefing.

Transcript: (via email)

Tommy Christopher: Well, the last one is really quick.  Is there any chance the President is going to put in an appearance at the rally?

MR. GIBBS: Put in an appearance?

Tommy Christopher: At the rally to restore honor/fear — sanity and fear.

MR. GIBBS: No, we’ll be flying around to the other states.

…

Q    Robert, just about The Daily Show interview.  You explained kind of the President’s reasons for going on it.  It does coincide with the run-up to this big rally that he’s having over the weekend.

MR. GIBBS: I will say this.  Jon Stewart announced a long, long time ago that he would be in Washington before the existence of the rally.  That’s when we — we signed up to do the show many months ago, I think long before the existence of the rally.

Q    Okay.  But does the President — first of all, does the President have any opinion or even an understanding of what the rally’s purpose is, and whether it’s something that he thinks would be useful to the Democrats?

MR. GIBBS: I’ve not talked to the President about the rally.  I don’t know what his opinion is on it.

…

Mark Knoller: And The Daily Show is part of that (GOTV effort)?

MR. GIBBS: I think absolutely.  I think the — we have — two things.  I think obviously you’ve got a constituency of younger voters that watch that show, and it’s a good place to go and reach them.

And, look, sort of ancillary to that, my second point, which is — whether it is — whether you’re doing something like The View, or you’re doing something like The Daily Show, look, I don’t have to tell you guys that not everybody — there’s a lot of different channels for people to watch these days.

They get their information from not just television news and cable and newspapers and radio and the Internet.  They get them from — there’s a lot of different places.  And the President hasn’t been shy about going to the places where people are getting their information and trying to make his case.  And I think that’s what he’ll do on the show.

…

Q    Robert, does the President not have any concern about the conflation of entertainment comedy and politics?  Does that — does it take away from the seriousness?

MR. GIBBS: Jon Stewart is sort of past that.

Q    It’s not just about the interview, but the weekend as well.

MR. GIBBS: How so?

Q    Well, to the extent that a leading comedian is holding a political rally — no concern about that?

MR. GIBBS: Not necessarily, no.  I mean, look, we’ve had entertainers join things like Rock the Vote to help register people to vote and help get people involved.  Look, I think the President would tell you that we have a very special gift in our democracy that the people get to render their judgment and they get to elect those that will represent them in Washington.  And efforts that help get people involved in and excited in participating in that democracy on either side is a good thing.

McConnell’s statement, that the “single most important thing” is not jobs, or even tax cuts, but defeating President Obama, indicates that no such realization is forthcoming. As they have demonstrated these past two years, the Republicans are even willing to obstruct their own ideas in order to deny the President any political victory, so what hope is there that an even more powerful Republican minority (or majority?) will deign to do anything for the next two years?

David Corn, Bill Press, and I pressed Gibbs about this, and his responses only made sense as an opening bid to shame McConnell and company into “rolling up their sleeves.”

Gibbs isn’t naive enough to think that, after making gains in both houses of congress, Republicans will simply drop the politics. He telegraphs as much when he tells Bill Press that he “simply took Mitch McConnell at his word.” He’s giving the Republicans a chance to fold their bluff, even if he knows they won’t.

Hoping that the Republicans will come around is all well and good, but if they won’t put down the Slurpee and roll up their sleeves, will President Obama roll up a newspaper? Or will we spend the next two years stuck in the political mud?

Chris Matthews

Burns repeated his theory that the Republican Party is just a wing of a vast Fox News/Rush Limbaugh-controlled conspiracy, with Corn corroborating that, but what spoke out the most in the segment was a small compilation of recent statements by the man himself, claiming that Shahzad is a Democrat; that white males are oppressed; that the Obama “regime”* is “not of this country,” etc.

Showing this “Rush Limbaugh Greatest Hits” package, Matthews called Limbaugh a genius and challenged any and all Republicans that do not agree with Limbaugh to come on the show– “we’ll give you a full platform, of course you’ve got to be careful what he does to you.”

*Note to both Matthews and Limbaugh: A state is a bureaucratic authority (ie the post office or the OMB). A regime is a government system (ie a theocracy or representative democracy). A government is the group of people put into power by the regime (ie Obama administration or Bush administration). There is no such thing as “regime change” in America unless the Constitution is significantly altered such that the transfer of power is different. Until the institutions of Congress, the Courts, and the White House are changed, there will be no regime change in America.

Corn is a well-known author and journalist who broke early news on the Valerie Plame affair, and provided memorable coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. You’ll also recognize him from frequent cable news appearances.

In the most action-packed Inside the White House Press Corps ever, Corn talks about covering the White House, his Twitter dominance, and tells us what he misses about the Bush White House, all while fending off chaotic distractions.

First, a few quick notes. As I said before, David and I have been trying to synchronize our schedules for awhile now, and he had only a limited time to do the interview, so we really didn’t want to delay it. Unfortunately, it was raining outside, and we had no choice but to do it in the briefing room, where all of the networks were setting up for a round of David Axelrod interviews.

As a result, this interview took place amid nerve-jangling chaos that reminded me of that scene in Boogie Nights where the guy keeps lighting firecrackers for no reason. Although the microphone dampens the ambient noise somewhat, I thought it would be cool to let you all in on what it was like. Thus, I am presenting this interview uncut, to truly give you an insider’s view of a working briefing room.

It should also give you some appreciation for Corn’s unflappability, as he ignores a video camera being dropped behind him, and handles a challenge to the continuation of our interview.

America could use more of this — an unfettered and public airing of political differences by our elected representatives. So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly — and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries.

The group, whose steering committee is made up of Micah Sifry, David Corn, Mike Moffo, Mindy Finn, Jon Henke and Glenn Reynolds, is calling themselves “Demand Question Time” has already launched a website and collected 50 signatures. You can sign the petition here if you like. According to Politico the “original endorsers” include: Grover Norquist and Eli Pariser, Joe Trippi and Mark McKinnon, Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey…Ari Melber, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ana Marie Cox and Nate Silver.”

It will be interesting to see who they manage to attract: the Baltimore session was hailed from both sides of the aisle as a great success, so much so, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called for the SOTU address to be returned to its original written form and replaced by just this sort of back and forth exchange. It will also be interesting to see whether the strong presence of well known online folks such as Ana Marie Cox (she has 1.5 million followers) can translate into actual names on a list. In the meantime, you can read the full call to action here.

Features editor Todd Pruzan and media columnist Jeff Bercovici were both cut loose when Portfolio folded in April. and were both snapped up by Daily Finance in short order (Portfolio.com recently relaunched under the Charlotte-based American City Business Journals Inc., another unit of Advance Publications, which owns Conde Nast). This move further indicates that AOL, which has done some aggressively smart hiring elsewhere on its blogs (most recently David Corn for “Politics Daily”), is serious about expanding — and spending the money to do so. Where other sites are being forced to cut back and do more with less, AOL seems to be merrily picking up name-brand talent in what is becoming a regular habit.

Gustin will covering tech/digital media and related subjects; a look at the masthead on the right-hand side of the homepage shows that there isn’t much on the beat that they don’t cover. Looks like Politics Daily isn’t AOL’s only trophy blog.

Related:
AOL Blossoms As Print Retreats [NYT]
NY Times Touts AOL’s Inflated Traffic; Ignores Internet Trickery Behind It [Mediaite]
At AOL, It’s Politics Daily, Not Hourly [WaPo]
Is Politics Daily AOL’s Trophy Blog? [Mediaite]

source: Politics Daily homepage

In his column in today’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz painted Politics Daily as a fantastic wonderland of six-figure salaries, 5000-word articles, foreign correspondents who actually go overseas, and a distaste for the “hyperpartisan.” All of which sounds great, but could it ever turn a profit in an environment where traffic for articles like “Strippers Compete in Palin Look-alike Contest” is likely to dwarf Afghanistan coverage for the foreseeable future? If not, what is AOL trying to pull?

A while back, Mediaite wrote about AOL’s new political blog, Politics Daily, as a case study of AOL’s plans to focus on “the content business” by hiring top reporters away from print publications. Among others, Politics Daily has bagged The Baltimore Sun‘s David Wood, CQPolitics’ David Corn, and USA Today’s Jill Lawrence, all media vets with impressive resumes. And though Kurtz seemed impressed — he pointed to the “high-minded” site that “slows things down, rather than posting every traffic-generating tidbit,” skeptics of the site — and this particular content strategy — remain.

Politics Daily pissed off a lot of political bloggers when TechCrunch ran this piece claiming that Politics Daily had bigger traffic than Politico. As one blogger told Mediaite, “They’re claiming to be the #1 politics site based on visitor count.  While technically true, I would guess about 80% of those are from places like the AOL welcome screen.  This would be akin to Wal Mart running a news show at their registers and claiming to be the #1 newscast.”

According to Kurtz, the site gets roughly half of its startling 3.6 million monthly unique visitors from its parent portal AOL; it doesn’t yet have big pickup from without. Kurtz cites two of the site’s popular dueling opinion pieces about Sarah Palin as the sort of thing it needs more of, yet is reluctant to ratchet up:

That is the kind of attention-grabbing argument that Politics Daily needs if it is to compete with the likes of the Huffington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast, Slate, Salon and other sites that offer speed, original writing and higher production values. With [Daily Politics EIC] Henneberger calling the operation a “preservation society” dedicated to “respectful” arguments, Politics Daily remains defiantly out of step with the online ethos.

“If there isn’t a market for this kind of Web site, that takes politics seriously, that is politically eclectic and journalistically conservative,” [Walter] Shapiro says, “we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

Is there such a market online? And if so, who’s buying? The answer may not be readers or advertisers, but AOL itself.

Politics Daily’s high-mindedness is admirable, but it raises the question of whether AOL is using the site to buy prestige. AOL and Time Warner will finally split at the end of 2009, after which the newly-created AOL Inc. will be a publicly-traded company. AOL has announced that it’s reinventing itself as a content (i.e. blog) provider. Though the site may never make money, AOL could be betting that having one “serious” site to pad out a portfolio rife with fluffy, slideshow-happy sites like Asylum and TMZ is worth the loss. If you’re a five billion dollar company nervous about getting and keeping investors, subsidizing a few great reporters to do solid but unmarketable work may be a price worth paying for good press from the likes of Kurtz.

Politics Daily currently has one Doubleclick banner up top and one sponsored sidebar on the right. Even with 3.6 million uniques, this is hardly the stuff on which to feed a full-time staff of more than twenty-five, many of whom are making six figures. And as Nick Denton wrote in his manifesto “A 2009 Internet Plan,” “Get out of categories such as politics to which advertisers are averse:” It’s unlikely that you’ll see wall-to-wall 90210 ads on Politics Daily anytime soon.

As of publication, several e-mails to AOL Senior Producer Michael Kraskin, who is listed as the contact for Politics Daily, went unanswered.

[E]arlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to – they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have a news room 1,500 journalists and editors strong. Amazingly, failing old media is throwing away their most valuable assets. And AOL is eagerly picking those assets up for a song. Before anyone knows it, AOL may be the most powerful news outlet in the world.

But if consultant-happy print publications are shooting themselves in the feet, the arrangement is mutually beneficial for journalists and for AOL, whose CEO, Tim Armstrong, announced earlier this year that the company plans to shift its focus to “the content business.” Consider PoliticsDaily, which AOL just launched this spring. According to Compete.com, the site had 2,118,229 unique visitors last month, putting them at an overall rank of #820 on the web. These are astounding numbers for a site launched so recently. And its traffic is still going up. How did they do it?

For one thing, AOL.com is a tremendous platform. According to Compete, it had more than 55 million uniques in June. PoliticsDaily has a link on AOL’s sidebar (left), and its stories are a part of AOL’s front page rotation.

But the other key part of the equation is the writers. On Wednesday, AOL’s recently-launched PoliticsDaily.com hired veteran political reporter David Corn away from CQPolitics.com. Corn isn’t some hack blogger: this is a guy who is fifty years old, is the chief of Mother Jones‘ Washington bureau, and broke major news in the Valerie Plame affair — and he’s going to work for AOL. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable. In his farewell post, he wrote:

I also feel lucky to be joining PoliticsDaily.com, which began this spring. It has recruited some of the best political journalists in the business and some of my favorites, including Lynn Sweet, Jill Lawrence, Walter Shapiro, and Carl Cannon.

PoliticsDaily is just one of many. TechCrunch has a list of some other experienced writers hired by AOL to fill out their full-time newsroom of more than 1,000 people. The list of upstart sites goes on: “manly site” Asylum.com and women’s interest site Lemondrop.com have rapidly emerged as major players in their fields, dwarfing comparable magazine sites like Elle.com and GQ/Details collabo men.style.com.

The tech industry is famous for its second acts, and AOL may have hit upon an unlikely winning formula, though it’s too early to tell. But without great writers and reporters to be had for cheap — and the newspapers and magazines dimwitted enough to slough them off — AOL’s content business would be a certain bust.

Well, mystery solved — thanks to White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, who very kindly responded to our barrage of questions on this important matter of national security yesterday.  In so doing, he laid to rest some of the extrapolated conclusions drawn from the 22-second clip of Gibbs on C-SPAN, notably that White House staffers were banned from Twitter (they’re not), that the same people are responsible for both @WhiteHouse and @BarackObama (they’re not) and that nobody tweets from the White House (they do!). It’s true, children: It’s coming from inside the house. Behold Bill Burton’s answers below:

Who updates the White House Twitter feed? Is it one person or a few people? (updating from HootSuite suggests multiple editors)

The new media team (basically [Director of New Media] Macon Phillips and [Online Programs Director] Jesse Lee)

Does/do the same person/people update the Barack Obama Twitter feed?

No, that’s DNC.

Where are the offices of that person/those people located?

New media [NB: Those offices are in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.]

If in the White House, is HootSuite enabled on the White House computers?

Yes, for new media.

Are people allowed to bring their own laptops into the White House and work off those? Would that allow them to get on Twitter.com from inside the White House?

We use official government computers and archive records.

Why is Twitter blocked on the White House computers? Archaic technology, archaic 1978 Presidential Records Act , or official policy?

A little bit of recordkeeping a little bit of security but we are working with WH counsel and the Office of Administration CIO [Chief Information Officer] to review and relax these restrictions.

Is there any rule banning White House staffers from having their own personal Twitter account?

Not to my knowledge.

If not, could you point me to a few?

I have an account that I follow on my personal blackberry but I don’t actually twitter myself. It’s more to keep track of what Diddy and Perez Hilton are up to all day.

Would it be fair to call Robert Gibbs “internet-savvy?” Or would it be hideously inaccurate?

I’ve never known him to exactly break new ground as it relates to technology – but he’s a real whiz on his blackberry.

****

So there you have it. It should be noted that, a month and a half before Gibbs’ off-the-cuff response on C-SPAN sent the blogosphere into a min-tizzy,  Mother Jones‘ David Corn quietly determined that the new media team had exclusive White House Twitter privileges, and a month before that, Time‘s Michael Scherer described the travails of bringing the White House into the world of social media, including the new media team’s exemption from the standard White House computer blockage (Scherer’s also the one who noted that, technically, the new media team is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but “It’s coming from inside the Eisenhhower Executive Office Building!” is so much less scary. Then again, Cheney used to spend a lot of time there). Even so, the one or two tweets from Tweetie demonstrate that one could update Twitter from the White House; the point is, Twitter isn’t verboten, which means the geekosphere can relax and know that all their @replies to the White House are totally being read.